Kavanaugh wants us to know that last Thursday he “was there as a son, husband and dad.” Really? He wasn’t nominated to the Supreme Court “as a son, husband and dad.” We don’t give a fuck about his family life (except possibly as more or less reason to think he’s simply an asshole), that’s not what he’s there for.

He makes this weird claim in the Wall Street Journal (well hey at least it’s not Breitbart).

He starts by telling us how proud he was to be at the White House with his wife and daughters to accept the nomination.

My mom, Martha—one of the first women to serve as a Maryland prosecutor and trial judge, and my inspiration to become a lawyer—sat in the audience with my dad, Ed.

Can we not stop with this folksy crap already? What’s wrong with calling them his mother and father? And skipping the first names? We’re not at a church picnic. It’s a wonder he didn’t refer to his little woman and kiddies.

Then he says a lot about how not partisan he is.

After all those meetings and after my initial hearing concluded, I was subjected to wrongful and sometimes vicious allegations. My time in high school and college, more than 30 years ago, has been ridiculously distorted. My wife and daughters have faced vile and violent threats.

Against that backdrop, I testified before the Judiciary Committee last Thursday to defend my family, my good name and my lifetime of public service. My hearing testimony was forceful and passionate. That is because I forcefully and passionately denied the allegation against me. At times, my testimony—both in my opening statement and in response to questions—reflected my overwhelming frustration at being wrongly accused, without corroboration, of horrible conduct completely contrary to my record and character. My statement and answers also reflected my deep distress at the unfairness of how this allegation has been handled.

Well now wait a second. What does he mean by “my record”” What constitutes a record? It depends on who is compiling the record, doesn’t it. A substantial number of people have come forward to tell us about Kavanaugh’s record as a belligerent drunk and bully.

I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said. I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad. I testified with five people foremost in my mind: my mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all my daughters.

Well I for one cannot understand it, because this isn’t about his family, it’s about what he’s going to do to us.

I wonder if Kavanaugh would be disconcerted at all if his older daughter got into Radcliffe and then weeks before she was to start classes discovered she was pregnant…and she didn’t want to stay pregnant. I wonder if he would try to insist that she should delay Radcliffe for a year so that she could have the baby and give it up for adoption.

He says if he’s confirmed he’ll keep an open mind. I don’t believe him.

Why did I ever think it would matter?

Michelle Goldberg at the Times:

The restarted F.B.I. background check that seemed, a week ago, like a merciful concession to decency has instead been a cover-up. Agents didn’t even question Blasey or Kavanaugh. It’s not clear if they interviewed any of the more than 20 corroborating witnesses named by Deborah Ramirez, who claimed a drunken, aggressive Kavanaugh thrust his genitals into her face when they were students at Yale. The New Yorker reported that witnesses who tried to contact the F.B.I.were ignored; some ended up submitting unsolicited statements to the bureau.

Which were filed in the bottom drawer of a rusty filing cabinet in a sub-basement filled with piranhas.

Ultimately, according to the White House, the F.B.I. interviewed a total of nine people in its new review. Based on what they said, Republican leaders have declared that Blasey’s story remains uncorroborated.

In other words the Republicans told the FBI not to do anything that would actually turn up evidence, and Republican leaders have declared that Blasey’s story remains uncorroborated. It remains uncorroborated because they didn’t try to corroborate it.

Conservatives will say that they’re protecting an innocent man unfairly accused, not standing up for white male impunity as a principle. They either don’t believe Blasey, or they think that, in the absence of further proof, Kavanaugh should be given the benefit of the doubt, which in this case means a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. They think they’re the ones who are being fair and judicious. “One side is standing on evidence,” tweeted Commentary’s Noah Rothman. “The other on intuition and sentiment.”

Evidence! What evidence? There is no “evidence” that Kavanaugh did not assault Ford, there’s only his denial that he did. There’s also no evidence (that I know of) that he did, but that doesn’t equal “it’s just intuition and sentiment.” And there’s plenty of evidence that Kavanaugh is an angry hater of all things lefty, which is not a good quality in a supreme.

No Democrat or feminist cares that Kavanaugh drank a lot in high school; personally, I couldn’t have endured high school sober. We care that he described his younger self as a chaste innocent who was, as he said in his Fox News interview, “focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship.” In fact, by multiple accounts, Kavanaugh was a mean, rowdy drunk and a sexist bully.

Which is not what we expect in a Supreme Court justice.